


I've Been Waiting for the Day I Will Surely Die

by MadQueenCersei



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Background Relationships, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Gen, Robert's Rebellion, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-31
Updated: 2013-10-31
Packaged: 2017-12-31 00:26:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1025171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MadQueenCersei/pseuds/MadQueenCersei
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ashara Dayne is thirty pounds heavier and ten years older than she was ten moons ago, and she's done pretending everything's fine.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I've Been Waiting for the Day I Will Surely Die

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from "Shalott" by Emilie Autumn. I don't own anything clearly done by GRRM.

For the first time in her short life, the wind actually whips her legs to shreds. 

A hundred feet above the sea, she wears a simple dress made out of Dornish silk. Black, for mourning. It’s not doing much to protect her from the sun or the fierce winds that only come at the end of a short spring. She wraps her arms around her still-rounded belly and shivers, trying to block out the ice that runs through her veins. It’s true that Starfall rarely sees snow, even in the harshest winters, but Ashara Dayne feels as if she’s been buried under a snowdrift for years.

It’s all because of that damned tourney. Harrenhal had been a blur of clashing steel and a chance for her to forget that she was still a “maid” at twenty-two. She’d spun around the room with a Stark boy, fucked another one in the darkest corner of his tent, and smiled sweetly at her brother as he gave her increasingly dirty looks.

Oh, Gods. Arthur.

It’s so easy to get wrapped up in everything that had been, back when she was just a lady-in-waiting to Elia an unsung wet nurse-slash-septa for Rhaenys and Aegon, and a lady with her whole life at court ahead of her. If she loses herself in memories of running through the deserted gardens of the Red Keep, darting in and out of the rows of Stormlands roses and Lysene lilies, she can pretend that she still has a life to look forward to. She has (had) a family in the Martells, garners (garnered) praises of her beauty from every lordling from Last Hearth to Salt Shore, and lives (lived) the life that any maiden with an ounce of intelligence would be jealous of. 

In that life, she’d practically been part of the royal contingent herself as she held Elia’s hand under the table of the Small Council room while Rhaegar, Arthur, and Barristan Selmy discussed bringing the high lords together to discuss the Aerys situation. 

(“Rhaegar,” says Elia, so frightened by the prospect of rebellion that she forgoes all courtesy, “we must tell no one of this, save the people in this room, your mother, and Prince Lewyn. Above all else, we will keep everyone safe.”

Rhaegar looks anywhere but her, and Ashara stares into his violet eyes, making sure he knows her eyes will never stop glaring until he ensures that Elia is far away from any plot that might prevent her from dancing with her babes, charming the Seven Kingdoms with her smile, or japing with the Kingsguard.)

She’d suckled Elia’s babes when the poor girl was so ill she couldn’t even lift her bedcovers. Even in a room that smelled of dreamwine, milk of the poppy, and death, Ashara had fluffed her lady’s pillows, opened the curtains, and written the letters Elia would dictate to Obara Sand in a way that could make even the most brutish, hostile child’s eyes light up.

She’d never lost the feistiness that Lady Ariella had shown her in the throne room of Sunspear, and she’d never forgotten secret dances with Oberyn in the Water Gardens. Seven hells, she had somehow managed to teach Prince Rhaegar and Jon Connington a bungled version of the steps to “The Dornishman’s Wife.” Sort of.  
(Even at the age of four, little Ashy had been able to wiggle her hips better than this Lord Jon, who had awkwardly bounced from foot to foot like he never had desired to hold a woman in his arms. Never again will I try to lighten his mood, she’d sworn to herself. 

But he’s dead now, and really, so is she. There will be no more dancing lessons coming out of House Dayne for a long time.)

Now, Ashara’s sure enough of her footing that when she hums the contralto lilt and does the little jig herself, she doesn’t fall over the edge. Her hands, held out at her sides, move with the wind as she tries to execute the twirl she’d been able to do when she was thirty pounds lighter. Ah, the joys of having been with child.

She stops dancing and looks down at the sea again, beyond the tower of her salvation.

Should she laugh or cry, thinking about the pure, perfect little daughter buried in her family plot? The one who would forever be remembered as her lady mother’s stillborn child. No one knows that Mother had her own babe, who had died after just three days of life. No one will ever need to know that her darling little Rickara Sand is (was), in fact, hers. Rumors will just be rumors, after all, and words will just be wind.

But in this bloated body of hers, with her sagging teats and heavy stones for feet, she doesn’t feel relieved. She feels weighed down with the knowledge that Rickara should be in her arms, happily gurgling the way Rhaenys had. Her babe was going to be a chance for her to start over, away from the filth and the fires of the Red Keep. She’d had her father’s eyes, Ashara’s curls and Arthur’s grin. 

Arthur isn’t dead. He can’t be; the Sword of the Morning promises her day and night, whether by letter or by whisper, to protect her even when he knows she can protect herself. But Mother- and poor Ned Stark – insist that he as dead and gone as Rickara. As Rhaegar. As Brandon. As Elia and the babes. Even as she remembers the sight of his perfectly still body lying in Starfall’s great hall, she shakes her head.

Up here, as she swings her foot back and forth, she whispers a prayer to the Mother, to the Father, to the Crone, and even to the Stranger, who has come calling too often in her humble opinion. 

"Gentle Mother, font of mercy, help our daughters through this fray.  
Soothe the wrath and tame the fury; teach us all a kinder way."

This isn’t even the first time she’s said these words up on the Palestone Sword. She has climbed the rungs to the top of the tower three times, planning on falling into the sea. She hasn’t done it yet, and she doesn’t think she knows how.

But she doesn’t know how to continue, either, not when Dawn sits on her bed instead of Arthur's hip and her heart’s remains are scattered throughout Harrenhal, King’s Landing, and her daughter’s grave site.

She sighs to herself. It's lost in the howling of the waters. She’ll dance the jig one more time, and then she’ll come back down. If she wants to fall to her death with all of a lady's grace, she’ll find another day, one when she’s absolutely sure that she wants to inhale the Dornish Sea. 

"The Dornishman’s wife was as fair as the sun,  
And her kisses were warmer than spring…"

She spins herself in a circle, rotates her wrists, holds her arms above her head and screams into the mist. She dances for Elia and Arthur, for Rhaegar and the babes, for Brandon. For herself. She doesn’t want it to be her swan song, not yet. She’s no Baratheon, but this song is her fury.

Apparently, she’s too furious. She forgets how to pivot her left foot during the climax of the song, when voices around her are supposed to be swelling instead of the tide. She estimates, not even thinking, just losing herself in a curtain of grief. She imagines a pair of arms encircling her waist, Northern furs brushing against her teats as she juts to the side just an inch too far.

"Brothers, o brothers, my days are done,  
The Dornishman’s taken my life."

As the words leave her voice, raw and ugly in their grief, her heavy feet meet air. As she flies down the length of the tower and towards the sea, she does not fight gravity. As she finishes singing the last lines of her swan song, she plasters on a smile, closing her eyes as the saltwater takes her.

She is still little Ashy, Ashara Dayne, the Beauty of Starfall. If nothing else, she can face the unexpected knowing that she danced through her life with a Dayne’s courage. 

It'll just have to be good enough.

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't written fanfiction in over three years, and this is my first time actually posting something for ASOIAF, so please let me know what you think. Comments, suggestions- anything's welcome. (This was un-beta'd,so any spelling mistakes or awkward phrasing are entirely my fault.)


End file.
